Valley Emperor

The mainland of the Datang Empire is now extremely vast, but in fact not all places are suitable for large-scale development and survival. At least the northern provinces are now impossible to develop on a large scale.

The essence of the empire is still a few central provinces and eastern coastal provinces, especially the four major regions of the Pearl River Delta, the Yangtze River Delta, the Bohai Bay, and Huguang.

In other places, the development is actually very general, mainly due to the restrictions of natural conditions such as traffic, terrain, and resources.

Among the inland areas, only Shanxi has developed better, and the reason why this place has developed well is purely because of the coal and the opening of the railway.

Today is the age of steam, and the demand for coal is increasing day by day, which is also seen by the fact that although the output of coal has risen year by year, it still has not dropped in price.

Shanxi also relies on a large number of coal resources to develop its economy.

However, this is limited to the industrial segment.

However, even now is the period of the industrial revolution, but in fact the scale of the industry is still far from being comparable to that of later generations.

For the current Datang Empire, the primary industry represented by agriculture still plays an unshakable role. How well the living standard of ordinary people in a place depends more on the development of local agriculture.

As for industry and commerce, compared to the more than 200 million people in the Datang Empire, the jobs provided by industries in these years are still very limited.

Although many typical industrial and commercial cities emerged in the Datang Empire, such as Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Tianjin, the three major industrial and commercial cities are all developing rapidly, and because of the clustering of factories, the urban population has skyrocketed, which has exceeded one million people successively. .

The second-class cities such as Wuhan, Dangtu, Jinling and Zhenjiang also have hundreds of thousands of people.

In addition, there are many small and medium-sized cities that also gather a large number of people, and there are many cities with more than 100,000 people now.

This can be seen as urbanization caused by the Industrial Revolution, and a large number of agricultural populations have been gradually transformed into industrial and commercial populations.

If it is accumulated, the urban population will be about 20 million within the national territory, that is, the mainland, Donghai Province, which has been localized in the future, and some localized areas.

The proportion of cities and towns is less than 10%.

So don't look at a city with a population of one million, there are many cities with hundreds of thousands of people, but compared with the population of more than 200 million, the proportion occupied is very small.

Most of the people of the Tang Empire still lived in rural areas and depended on farming for a living.

Therefore, in most cases, the quality of a place's agricultural development is directly related to the local people's livelihood.

Generally speaking, people's livelihood is better in places with relatively fertile land and a large amount of arable land, such as Jiangnan, Huguang, North China, etc., all of which are similar.

As for Shanxi, although there are a lot of coal resources, which have brought a lot of help to the local area, people's livelihood is still relatively difficult because of the large number of people and the small land.

Therefore, the living conditions of many places in the local area are actually very general, and it seems that the total economic volume is large, but the life of the local people is really not as high as that of the immigrants in the Americas.

Even if they go to Africa and South Africa, any immigrant can get a lot of arable land. I don't dare to say anything about it.

In fact, it is precisely because of this that so many people immigrate overseas one after another every year, or settle in frontier provinces.

And this point, Li Xuan is also powerless. For these backward areas restricted by natural conditions, although the government level can promote the development of one or two places, it is absolutely impossible to promote all places.

But even if it is difficult, you have to do it!

For example, in fact, many places are not suitable for the development of industry, but there is no such opportunity!

For example, Sichuan, the land of abundance is actually quite good, but it has not developed much in recent years, mainly because the traffic into Sichuan is relatively poor.

There are no railways, and although there are ordinary roads, the roads are very difficult to walk.

In terms of shipping on the Yangtze River, the section from Yichang to Chongqing is the famous Three Gorges. The navigation is very dangerous, and the water depth and width of the waterway are not enough. In addition, the current is very fast, so it is often necessary to use high-horsepower steamboats to travel up the river. On the other hand, this not only increases the cost of transportation, but also limits the amount of transportation.

So far, the development of industry and commerce in Sichuan has mainly focused on serving the local light industry, but the proportion is very small.

More, the local still relies on traditional agriculture.

Sichuan is like this, but other provinces are not as good as it is. For example, Guizhou, Yunnan, Guangxi and other southwestern provinces have not developed very well.

But in Li Xuan's view, it is still possible to develop, even if it is not to engage in any large-scale industry, it is also possible to engage in more light industry or specialty processing industry.

Restricting the development of these places is still a traffic problem in Li Xuan's view!

Especially in places where inland shipping conditions are not very good, because of inconvenient transportation, economic development, especially the development of industry and commerce, has been dragged down too much by places with convenient transportation.

Naturally, Li Xuan would not consider this situation as he did not see it.

In the past few years, the development of the internal affairs of the empire was mainly concentrated in places with better conditions. Even railways were built in places where it was easier to build railways. The focus was on the development of the Yangtze River Delta, Pearl River Delta, and the Bohai Rim, at most. Plus a lake.

Now, Li Xuan is already preparing to tilt toward other provinces. Anyway, other well-developed provinces have been able to develop independently and continuously, and they can develop very well without the support of Jinling.

However, if other provinces do not have the support of Jinling, it is estimated that it will be difficult to catch up.

According to the experience of later generations, if you want to get rich, build roads first!

To develop the local economy, the traffic problem must be solved first!

To solve the transportation problem in the inland provinces in this year, there is no other way but to rely on the railway.

To this end, Li Xuan has already asked the Datang Railway Corporation to start planning the construction of the Southwest Railway trunk line.

At present, the railway construction of the Datang Empire has basically completed several major trunk lines that have completed the preliminary planning.

There are mainly from Ningbo to Hangzhou, Shanghai, Zhenjiang, Jinling, Jiujiang, and there is a Jiangnan railway network from Hangzhou to Jinling in the middle.

Then, starting from Hong Kong, it will pass through Guangzhou, Changsha, Wuhan, Zhengzhou, and Tianjin North-South Line Railway.

Then there is the East-West Railway, the super-long East-West Railway from Jinling to Xuzhou, Zhengzhou, Chang'an, Lanzhou, Suzhou, Hami, Tubo, Kashgar, and Kuri. This railway includes the Beijing-Zhengzhou Railway, the Northwest Railway, and the Central Asia Railway. East and West segment.

Then there are secondary trunks, such as:

With Jinan as the center, the Shandong Cross Railway network connects Tianjin, Xuzhou, Zhengzhou and Qingdao at the same time.

Nanchang to Wuhan Nanwu Railway.

Then there is the grassland railway, starting from Tianjin, passing through Youzhou, Fengzhou, and Heishicheng.

Then there is the Northeast Railway from Tianjin to the east, passing through Jinzhou, Shenyang and Harbin.

Then there is Shenyang eastward, entering the Korean Peninsula, and reaching the Liaodong Railway in Busan.

The above-mentioned railway trunk line constitutes the main railway trunk line of the empire. At the same time, around these railway trunk lines, there are many railway branch lines, and the more developed the economy, the more railway branch lines.

For example, in the Pearl River Delta, the Yangtze River Delta and the North China Plain, there are many railway lines, and their total length is also very long.

However, there are still many places without trains, such as Sichuan, Yunnan and Guizhou provinces, Guangxi and other provinces. Although they have some short-distance railways in their own provinces, they are not connected to the railway network.

Next, what Li Xuan wants the railway company to do is to build the railways in the above-mentioned provinces first. As for more frontier provinces, such as Turpan Province, Northeast Province in the north of Heilongjiang, and Hexi in Siberia Province and Siberia will not do it for the time being.

The natural environment of those people is too harsh. Turpan is a plateau. It will be troublesome for future generations to build a railway. Don't expect to build a railway these days.

In the northern provinces, there are not many people, and most of them are frozen soil, which is difficult to repair, and it is useless to repair.

However, several provinces in the southwest are different from the province of Fujian~www.wuxiaspot.com~ Li Xuan has made a decision, and the Railway Corporation will naturally not have any delay.

Soon, he reported the planned railway construction plan to Li Xuan.

On the Fujian side, the main purpose is to build a railway connecting Jiangxi and Fujian. As for the coastal areas, there is sea transportation, so there is no need to rush to build it.

The railway has been dragged on and not repaired, purely because the terrain is too complicated and the construction cost is too high. At the same time, the coastal transportation in Fujian is actually very developed, and the shipping is convenient, and the demand for railway transportation is actually limited.

Since it is possible to use simple and convenient shipping, the difficult and costly railways will naturally be suspended.

After all, there will be no maritime safety issues in Fujian.

This East Taiping sea area is reserved for the imperial navy, and it is basically impossible for foreign ships to threaten the safety of the empire's navigation in this sea area.

As for breaking through the blockade of the Imperial Navy and then entering the East Pacific waters, unless it is an alien invasion, there is no such possibility.

In this year's Datang Empire, how strong the navy is, this is actually difficult to measure, because they randomly pull out a squadron, which is stronger than all the navies of other countries combined.

In the period when the sun never set, the United Kingdom used to have a two-strong standard, and its naval strength exceeded the sum of the world's second largest and the third largest in the world.

Although the U.S. Navy after the Cold War has not been clearly announced, the conventional navy of others is playing the global standard, that is, the U.S. Navy one-on-one against the navies of other countries in the world!

But it's different when it comes to the Tang Empire Navy!

The Datang Imperial Navy never pursued any numerical superiority. What they pursued was absolute control of the global navy!

What is absolute control?

That's what they want to go there and go there!

If you don't want anyone to go there, don't let anyone go there!